Travel Tuesday: Geothermal Yellowstone

Hooray for [Travel] Tuesday! Okay, so maybe I’m not that excited about Tuesday, but this link-up does make me pretty happy (smile). Today feels like a good day to continue the Yellowstone adventure with a special focus on the National Park’s geothermal features.

As I mentioned in the formal introduction post, Yellowstone National Park boasts over 10,000 geothermal features and 300 geysers. This makes the park home to approximately one half of the world’s active geysers! I was really surprised by this statistic at first, but once you enter the park it begins to make sense. There seems to be geothermal features popping up (sometimes literally) all over the park. There have been quite a few articles lately highlighting just what a pain this can be for park rangers.

Unfortunately, you can’t take a long, leisurely swim in these hot springs, but they are still quite beautiful to look at! The temptation to test out the temperature was just too much for my dad so he stuck a hand in. My brother and I of course followed suit (although for myself a finger was enough) – after all, if dad does it, it has to be okay, right? Ha. Anyway, the one we tested was definitely hot! I can’t imagine what some of the “hotter” ones must feel like. We made stops along the way to see the geyser basins and they also did not disappoint! It’s truly an amazing thing to watch all the eruptions – large and small. I’m pretty sure we just hit the highlights of what the park has to offer, but that was more than enough to convince me a return trip is necessary! (smile)

So I won’t pretend to know everything about geothermal features and/or geysers. I’ll just let this small selection of photos speak for their beauty (and highly recommend a click over to the National Park’s website) (smile).

Mammoth Hot Springs

Mammoth Hot Springs

Steamboat Geyser – Unfortunately we didn’t see any big shows

Steamboat Geyser – Impressive no matter the size

Dad just had to do it! And of course so did I – and yes, it is hot!

Deceptively cool looking – definitely hot!

Mudpots

Mudpots – I bet this mud would make a great facial 🙂

Mudpots – These guys were so soothing to watch

Firehole spring

This is the area where the road melted! (Firehole Spring)

So beautiful! One of my favorites (Firehole Spring)

Creepy black hole

Colors are just so amazing!

Hot spring water meet very cold river water

Amazing how the heat can change the landscape

A nice smelly steam bath 🙂

What geothermal features have you visited??

Come join the fun with Bonnie!! New co-hosts also announced this week!

I would like to see the ones in Iceland primarily because you can actually enjoy them through a more “hands on” (or “body in”) experience 🙂 Yellowstone is beautiful to look at but the temptation to touch made me feel like a 5 year old!

Even after working in Yellowstone for three summers, there is still so much to see. One of my favorite memories was laying on the ground on the Wapiti Lake Trail alongside a blubbering mud pot and listen to it hiss and feel the heat emanate from the ground.

Wow love the pictures of the geysers (and other geothermal things – i’m having a hard time making the difference ha!) The firehole spring looks so amazing – I mean the colours makes for such beauty!
And I love your new profile picture, it is really nice! 🙂

Thank you! The best way to tell the difference is that the geysers spout water up and out (usually rather forcefully) and the springs just generally bubble like boiling water. Considering they kind of run into one another, it is really hard to tell them apart sometimes! 🙂
The Firehole Spring was definitely my favorite just for the colours! There’s a larger one there (called the Grand Prismatic) but you can really only see the colors from up above it (sadly).